Oma Observability

Observability Agent - Intent-based Router

Scheduling

Goal

Route, design, tune, and review observability work across MELT+P signals, layers, boundaries, vendor categories, transport choices, meta-observability, and incident forensics.

Intent signature

• User asks for observability, telemetry, OTel, metrics, logs, traces, profiles, SLOs, RUM, APM, incident forensics, trace propagation, transport tuning, or observability-as-code.
• User needs vendor/category routing or observability architecture instead of a single vendor's already-covered setup.

When to use

• Setting up an observability pipeline (OTel SDK + Collector + vendor backend)
• Designing traceability across service and domain boundaries (W3C propagators, baggage, multi-tenant, multi-cloud)
• Tuning transport layer (UDP/MTU, OTLP gRPC vs HTTP, Collector DaemonSet vs sidecar topology)
• Running incident forensics (6-dimension localization: code / service / layer / host / region / infra)
• Selecting a vendor category (OSS full-stack vs commercial SaaS vs high-cardinality specialist vs profiling specialist)
• Implementing observability-as-code (Grafana Jsonnet dashboards, PrometheusRule CRD, OpenSLO YAML, SLO burn-rate alerts)
• Meta-observability (pipeline self-health, clock skew detection, cardinality guardrails, retention matrix)
• Covering the MELT+P signal set: metrics, logs, traces, profiles (OTEP 0239), cost (OpenCost), audit (SOC2/ISO), privacy (GDPR/PIPA)
• Migrating off deprecated tools (Fluentd → Fluent Bit or OTel Collector, per CNCF 2025-10 guide)

When NOT to use

• LLM ops (prompt versioning, evals, gen_ai span deep dive) — use Langfuse, Arize Phoenix, LangSmith, or Braintrust directly
• Data pipeline lineage — use OpenLineage + Marquez, dbt test, or Airflow lineage backends
• IoT / hardware / datacenter physical-layer telemetry (IPMI, BMC, SNMP) — use vendor DCIM tooling (Nlyte, Sunbird, Device42)
• Chaos engineering orchestration — use Chaos Mesh, Litmus, Gremlin, or ChaosToolkit (this skill consumes their telemetry; it does not orchestrate chaos)
• GPU / TPU infrastructure observability — use NVIDIA DCGM Exporter + Prometheus
• Software supply chain (SBOM, attestation) — use sigstore (cosign / rekor), in-toto framework, SLSA level attestations
• Incident response workflow (on-call rotation, paging, escalation) — use PagerDuty, OpsGenie, or Grafana OnCall
• Single-vendor setup already fully covered by that vendor's own published skill — invoke the vendor skill directly

Expected inputs

• Observability intent, target system, architecture boundary, signals, vendor context, and incident symptoms if any
• Existing OTel/collector/vendor configs, dashboards, SLOs, trace/log/metric examples, or deployment topology

Expected outputs

• Routed observability guidance, setup/migration/tuning plan, incident-forensics path, alerting/SLO guidance, or observability-as-code recommendations
• Transport, meta-observability, privacy, audit, and retention checks
• Vendor delegation target when appropriate

Dependencies

• OTel/W3C/CNCF references and resources under resources/
• Vendor categories, matrix, standards, incident forensics, meta-observability, transport, layers, boundaries, and signal guides

Control-flow features

• Branches by intent, vendor category, layer/boundary/signal matrix, transport topology, privacy/audit risk, and incident localization dimension
• May read/write observability config and docs; generally delegates vendor-specific implementation
• Requires live status verification for load-bearing CNCF/vendor currency

Structural Flow

Entry

1. Classify the intent: setup, migrate, investigate, alert, trace, tune, or route.
2. Identify layers, boundaries, signals, and vendor category.
3. Load only the relevant resource guide(s).

Scenes

1. PREPARE: Classify intent and matrix coverage.
2. ACQUIRE: Read configs, topology, telemetry examples, or incident signals.
3. REASON: Route vendor/category, tune transport, assess meta-observability, or localize incident.
4. ACT: Produce setup/migration/tuning/alert/trace/forensics guidance or config changes.
5. VERIFY: Check pipeline health, clock skew, cardinality, retention, privacy, and audit concerns.
6. FINALIZE: Report route, evidence, risks, and handoff references.

Transitions

• If a vendor-owned skill fully covers setup, delegate instead of duplicating docs.
• If Fluentd appears, recommend Fluent Bit or OTel Collector migration.
• If incident investigation is requested, use 6-dimensional localization.
• If transport tuning appears, load transport-specific resources.

Failure and recovery

• If live CNCF/vendor status is load-bearing, verify current status.
• If telemetry samples are missing, provide instrumentation/collection steps before analysis.
• If scope belongs to out-of-scope domains, route to external authoritative tools.

Exit

• Success: observability path is routed, evidence-backed, and checks are explicit.
• Partial success: missing telemetry, stale vendor status, or external-domain handoff is explicit.

Logical Operations

Actions

| Action | SSL primitive | Evidence | |--------|---------------|----------| | Classify observability intent | SELECT | Intent rules | | Read telemetry/config evidence | READ | OTel/vendor configs, dashboards, samples | | Route vendor/category | SELECT | Vendor categories | | Infer coverage gaps | INFER | Matrix and signal/boundary mapping | | Validate meta-observability | VALIDATE | Clock, cardinality, retention, health | | Write guidance/config | WRITE | OaC/config/docs when requested | | Notify result | NOTIFY | Routed recommendation |

Tools and instruments

• OTel/CNCF/W3C standards references
• Vendor categories, matrix, incident forensics, meta-observability, transport and signal guides
• Optional CLI/config tooling from the target stack

Canonical workflow path

1. Classify intent: setup, migrate, investigate, alert, trace, tune, or route.
2. Select layer/boundary/signal coverage from `resources/matrix.md`.
3. Load the specific vendor, transport, incident, or signal guide before producing guidance.

When CNCF/vendor status is load-bearing, verify live state at https://landscape.cncf.io.

Resource scope

| Scope | Resource target | |-------|-----------------| | CODEBASE | Observability config, dashboards, alert rules, instrumentation | | LOCAL_FS | Resource guides and generated docs | | NETWORK | Vendor/CNCF status and telemetry backends when checked | | USER_DATA | Incident symptoms, logs, metrics, traces, profiles |

Preconditions

• Observability intent and system boundary are identifiable.
• Relevant telemetry/config evidence is available or missing evidence is stated.

Effects and side effects

• May recommend or modify observability config, dashboards, alerts, and instrumentation docs.
• May route to vendor-owned skills or external tools.

Guardrails

1. Classify intent before routing: every query goes through intent classification — setup | migrate | investigate | alert | trace | tune | route
2. Category-first, not vendor-registry: delegate to vendor-owned skills via resources/vendor-categories.md; do not duplicate their documentation
3. Transport tuning is the moat: UDP/MTU thresholds, OTLP protocol selection, Collector topology, and sampling recipes are in-skill depth that other skills do not cover
4. Meta-observability is non-negotiable: always validate pipeline self-health, clock sync ( Integration status (2026-Q2): rows below describe recommended handoff patterns from the oma-observability side. As of this version, reciprocal cross-references from the other skills' SKILL.md files are not yet in place — this is a v1.1 follow-up item. Users invoking the other skills directly will need to surface this integration manually until the reciprocal links land.

| Skill | Integration point | Reciprocal link status | |-------|------------------|-------| | oma-debug | On failure: pull traces + logs by request_id → trigger resources/incident-forensics.md 6-dim localization playbook | ⏳ pending (v1.1) | | oma-qa | Canary post-deploy loop via chrome-devtools MCP: console errors + Core Web Vitals trend; INP/LCP/CLS from layers/L7-application/web-rum.md | ⏳ pending (v1.1) | | oma-tf-infra | Terraform modules for OTel Collector, Grafana, and Loki stack provisioning | ⏳ pending (v1.1) | | oma-scm | Deployment SHA → service.version OTel attribute + release marker events; see boundaries/release.md | ⏳ pending (v1.1) | | oma-backend | Propagator and baggage rules cross-referenced in backend.md ruleset; DB N+1 + Kafka patterns in signals/traces.md | ⏳ pending (v1.1) | | oma-frontend | layers/L7-application/web-rum.md INP/LCP/CLS checklist cross-referenced in frontend.md ruleset | ⏳ pending (v1.1) | | oma-mobile | layers/L7-application/mobile-rum.md offline-queuing pattern cross-referenced in mobile.md ruleset | ⏳ pending (v1.1) | | oma-db | signals/traces.md DB patterns (N+1, connection pool) cross-referenced in database.md ruleset | ⏳ pending (v1.1) |

Versioning & Deprecation

• Spec version pinning: otel_spec / otel_semconv keys in each file's frontmatter document the assumed version. If content depends on a specific attribute stability tier, the tier is stated inline.
• Update triggers (not scheduled):
• OTel semconv promotion (Development → RC → Stable) affecting attributes cited in this skill → update resources/standards.md and the affected file, bump minor version.
• Attribute deprecation → replace across all citing files; migration note in resources/standards.md.
• CNCF status change for a vendor/project named in vendor-categories.md (Graduated / Archived / acquired) → update the vendor table.
• Authoritative live state: https://landscape.cncf.io for CNCF project status. This skill does not promise to track it on any schedule — verify at use time if the information is load-bearing.
• No per-file review stamps: earlier drafts carried last_reviewed / next_review frontmatter. Those were removed because no automated enforcement exists; relying on voluntary manual review produces stale stamps that misrepresent currency. Git history (git log path/to/file) is the source of truth for when a file was last changed.

Contribution Protocol

• Do NOT pre-declare future OMA skill names in user-facing documentation. If OMA-native coverage becomes warranted for an out-of-scope domain, evaluate and name it at that point.
• File edits follow the ownership matrix in docs/plans/designs/005-oma-observability.md §Ownership. CTO co-signs changes to standards.md, matrix.md, anti-patterns.md.
• Run resources/checklist.md §1 Setup validation before merging.

References

• Execution steps: resources/execution-protocol.md
• Intent classification: resources/intent-rules.md
• Coverage matrix: resources/matrix.md
• Standards (OTel spec, W3C, ISO): resources/standards.md
• Vendor categories: resources/vendor-categories.md
• Incident forensics: resources/incident-forensics.md
• Meta-observability: resources/meta-observability.md
• Observability-as-code: resources/observability-as-code.md
• Anti-patterns (18 items): resources/anti-patterns.md
• Checklist: resources/checklist.md
• Examples: resources/examples.md
• Transport:
• resources/transport/udp-statsd-mtu.md
• resources/transport/otlp-grpc-vs-http.md
• resources/transport/collector-topology.md
• resources/transport/sampling-recipes.md
• Layers:
• resources/layers/L3-network.md
• resources/layers/L4-transport.md
• resources/layers/mesh.md
• resources/layers/L7-application/web-rum.md
• resources/layers/L7-application/mobile-rum.md
• resources/layers/L7-application/crash-analytics.md
• Boundaries:
• resources/boundaries/multi-tenant.md
• resources/boundaries/cross-application.md
• resources/boundaries/slo.md
• resources/boundaries/release.md
• Signals:
• resources/signals/metrics.md
• resources/signals/logs.md
• resources/signals/traces.md
• resources/signals/profiles.md
• resources/signals/cost.md
• resources/signals/audit.md
• resources/signals/privacy.md

Source & license

This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

• Author: first-fluke
• Source: first-fluke/oh-my-agent
• License: MIT
• Homepage: https://firstfluke.com/oh-my-agent/

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.